15 Movies That Say More About Their Makers Than They Realise

11. Easy Rider - Dennis Hopper

Some know that Easy Rider was Dennis Hopper's directorial debut - a film that made the actor someone worth knowing in '60s Hollywood - but not that many know that he directed a second film titled The Last Movie, which was pretty much a disaster from start to finish. It's probably best summed up in the words of the projectionist from the original screening room Hopper sat in with the studio executives when they saw the film for the first time: "They sure named this movie right, because this is gonna be the last movie this guy ever makes." After the film bombed, the volatile and unreliable Hopper was more or less banned from major moviemaking for 20 years, and Easy Rider predicted the whole thing. Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda's freewheeling, stoned bikers on a quest to find the American dream have a good time but never truly find their goal, and come away bitter, disillusioned and far worse off than they started. "We blew it," in the famous words of Fonda's character, speaking not just for his and Hopper's opportunity to bring in a new era of creative expression for American filmmakers wasted because of hubris and self-destructive habits, but also for more or less their entire generation.